A Gatsbean Odyssey: Where the Beasts Roam (6/7)

“He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.”  –Dr. Johnson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

My copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas looks like this:

 

And it says it right there on the cover:

“A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream”

This is the essence of The Great Gatsby, and I guess I knew it all along. I knew Jay Gatsby was a man in search of the American Dream because English teachers had told me so, as had every introduction to every copy of the book I’ve ever read. I knew it, but I didn’t really know it. I didn’t grasp it. I didn’t have it by the ears.

At least not until I embarked on this study.

The Great Gatsby presents two visions of the American Dream, one ideal and the other real. The ideal vision is exemplified by Gatsby’s superior characteristics. Taking him for a superman wasn’t entirely wrong, for he truly is a marvel of intelligence, talent and optimism. Given an honest chance, he would certainly succeed. To this extent, he represents what every good American is told from birth: with hard work, you can be anything you want.

But Gatsby also represents the reality of the American Dream: money and fun by any means. His astronomical wealth comes from illegal activities conducted with the likes of Meyer Wolfshiem, a man with whom you would not trust your children. As for fun, Gatsby himself has little of it, but he provides it for others through his parties, where everyone behaves like there’s no tomorrow. They get drunk and dance wildly, they make out and fight, they ogle and gossip, they collapse in piles of giggles and sweat.

In short, they act like beasts.

I was stunned when I realized that this is exactly what occurs throughout most of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Hunter S. Thompson was showing us the same reality of the pursuit of the American dream--only 50 years further down the spiral. The alcohol is still there, but now there’s a lot more to mess you up:

“The trunk of the car looked like a mobile police narcotics lab. We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers . . . and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.”

And the effects on human dignity are no better:

“There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we’d get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next gas station.”

Just as in The Great Gatsby, Thompson’s novel shows us a nation teeming with the frenzied pursuit of money and fun by any means. Alcohol, drugs, sex, gambling, hustling . . .  This is how you attempt to reach out and grab the American Dream by the nuts. But it seems to do about as much good as the hijinks of Fitzgerald’s revelers. Like all roads to Las Vegas, these means lead nowhere.

 

Nowhere good, anyway.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas also presents the ideal of the American Dream. Thompson touches upon it in random, brief, melancholy moments of clarity. His vision of it, however, shares little with Fitzgerald’s. Instead of Gatsby’s industriousness and self-control, it is freedom of spirit, a spirit Thompson had glimpsed in the 60s and seen disappear in the Nixon years:

 

 

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